No Heroes by Chris Offutt Page A

his head down as if in custody, walking in a slow way to make sure he didn’t make a mistake. We went outside and he pointed to the tree line at the top of the hill.
    â€œThat’s my spot,” he said. “You come up later and we’ll burn one. I got beer up there, too.”
    â€œWhat are you doing in town this early?”
    â€œCollege girls, Chris, college girls. They are good to look at in the sun.”
    â€œDo you ever talk to them?”
    â€œNo. They’d not talk to me. They’re too stuck up.”
    â€œMaybe you are.”
    â€œYou shit and fall back in it, Chris. If I’m stuck up, what are you?”
    â€œI’m just a Haldeman boy, same as you.”
    â€œThat’s all I’ll ever be, but you’re a schoolteacher. By God, they ain’t no better thing to be unless it’s a doctor, and then you got to dig around in folks’ guts all day. What are you teaching anyhow?”
    â€œYou know, writing and stuff.”
    â€œThey say your books are good, Chris. I’ve read at them without much luck.”
    â€œWatch the law, Harley.”
    â€œI don’t need to,” he said. “I got you watching out for me like old times.”
    He patted his pocket containing the half joint, wiggled his eyebrows, and trudged up the hill. After a few steps he turned back.
    â€œHey, Chris,” he said. “How do you teach writing?”
    â€œThat’s a good question, Harley. What do you think?”
    â€œWell, if it was me, I’d say to just let them write what was on their mind.”
    â€œThat’s what I’ll tell them.”
    â€œYou sure you can’t slip up here for a minute?”
    â€œThanks, but no.”
    I watched him climb the hill. Like most people from Haldeman, Harley made it through eighth grade but not high school. He left the sidewalk for the woods and I saw flashes of his shirt moving through the trees as he headed for his spot, the highest point overlooking campus. I knew that he would get stoned, drink a beer, and take a nap. He would awaken thirsty, his head cloudy. He’d smoke a cigarette and check his pockets for money, hoping for enough to buy a bottle of Ale-8 and a Slim Jim at a gas station. Then he’d walk the road until someone picked him up and drove him somewhere. I knew all this because I’d once lived the same way.
    A particular quirk of mountain people is to go home as often as possible. Appalachian workers in Ohio factories commonly drive all night after Friday’s shift to reach the hills by Saturday morning. This trait has given rise to a joke about hillbillies being chained in Heaven to prevent them going home on the weekends. College students were no exception, and Morehead is known as a “suitcase school,” meaning that the vast majority of students went home on Friday.
    I walked into my first class late. The students sat in rigid rows of school desks. I announced the name of the class and asked if everyone was in the right room. No one spoke or nodded. I told them to call me by my first name. A few blinked in surprise. At MSU, most professors insist upon being called “Doctor.” I gave each student a copy of my course description, read it aloud, and asked for questions. There were none. A long silence ensued during which I looked out the window at maintenance workers busily primping the president’s home. When I returned my attention to the students, everyone looked at me, then away. I dismissed class. They left swiftly without a word.
    I walked downstairs and sat in the dimly lit theater where the plays I wrote as a student had been produced. The first one was a futuristic retelling of Oedipus Rex with a punk rock soundtrack. All the actors wore sunglasses. To gain entry to a gang, Eddie slept with a hooker who turned out to be his mother, and set fire to a wino who was later revealed as his father. Instead of blinding himself at the climax, Eddie removed